Read full description of the books:

If you get a chance to read both of these volumes at once, I think it might make for a better reading experience.DC: The New Frontier, Vol. 1 doesn't really go anywhere story-wise, and a lot of the characters are forgettable to most comic book readers.Fans of the Silver Age would probably be the exception...or so Joseph tells me. But even without an amazing plot, the art is just...lovely.

Ok, in Volume 2 you see how everything is sort of pulling together into a cohesive storyline. Is it an incredible story?No.A rather generic monster from the center of the planet is hell-bent on destroying Earth. There's not a lot of reasoning behind the Why of it, other than it wants to go out into space and visit other planets.I think.Anyway, it doesn't really matter. The point is that it takes a threat of that sort of magnitude to bring all of the heroes (super or not) together to fight this thing.Some of them (the ones nobody knows or cares about) won't make it back.It's the defining moment for all of them, though.

Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman are all heavily overshadowed by the Marian Manhunter, Flash, and Green Lantern.Whether or not that's a bad thing will vary from person to person.I was ok with it, but I doubt that everyone is going to get excited as I do over Hal Jordan.Whatever...haters.

It's a slow story, but with the beautiful art it's worth taking a look at.

Read information about the author

Darwyn Cooke was an Eisner Award winning comic book writer, artist, cartoonist and animator, best known for his work on the comic books Catwoman, DC: The New Frontier and Will Eisner's The Spirit.

In 1985, Cooke published his first comic book work as a professional artist in a short story in New Talent Showcase #19, but economic pressure made him leave the career and he worked in Canada as a magazine art director, graphic and product designer for the next 15 years.

In the early 1990s Cooke decided to return to comics, but found little interest for his work at the major publishers. Eventually he was hired by Warner Bros. Animation after replying to an ad placed by animator Bruce Timm.

He went on to work as a storyboard artist for Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series, and in 1999 he animated the main title design for Batman Beyond. He then worked as a director for Sony Animation's Men in Black: The Series for a year.

DC Comics then approached Cooke about a project which he had submitted to the publisher years earlier which eventually became Batman: Ego, a graphic novel published in 2000.

The critical success of that project led to Cooke taking on more freelance work, such as X-Force, Wolverine/Doop and Spider-Man's Tangled Web for Marvel Comics and Just Imagine... Stan Lee for DC.

In 2001, Cooke and writer Ed Brubaker teamed up to revamp the Catwoman character. They started with a 4 issue serial "Trail of the Catwoman" in Detective Comics #759-762 in which private detective Slam Bradley attempts to investigate the death of Selina Kyle (AKA Catwoman).

The story led into a new Catwoman title in late 2001 by Brubaker and Cooke, in which the character's costume, supporting cast and modus operandi were all redesigned and redeveloped. Cooke would stay on the series, which was met with critical and fan acclaim, up until issue #4. In 2002 he would write and draw a prequel, the Selina's Big Score graphic novel which detailed what had happened to the character directly before her new series.Cover to DC: The New Frontier #6.Cover to DC: The New Frontier #6.

Cooke's next project was the ambitious DC: The New Frontier (2004), a six issue miniseries which sought to tell an epic storyline bridging the gap between the end of the golden and the start of the silver age of comic books in the DC Universe. The story, which was set in the 1950s, featured dozens of super-hero characters and drew inspiration from the comic books and movies of the period as well as from Tom Wolfe's non-fiction account of the start of the US Space Program The Right Stuff. The major DC characters are introduced in "The New Frontier" in the same order that DC originally published them, even down to the correct month and year in the story's timeline. In 2005, Cooke won an Eisner Award for "Best Limited Series", and a Joe Shuster Award for "Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Cartoonist" for his work on the series.

Most recently, Cooke contributed to DC's artist-centric anthology project Solo. His issue (#5, June, 2005) featured several different stories in different styles with a framing sequence featuring the Slam Bradley character. In 2006, Solo #5 won an Eisner Award for "Best Single Issue."

In July 2005, it was announced that in 2006 Cooke and writer Jeph Loeb would produce a Batman/Spirit crossover, to be followed shortly afterwards by an ongoing Spirit series written and drawn by Cooke. Batman/The Spirit was ultimately published in November 2006, followed in December by the first issue of Cooke's The Spirit. In June 2007, Cooke and J. Bone won a Joe Shuster Award for "Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Artists" for their work on "Batman/The Spirit", and Cooke won "Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Cartoonist" for his work on "The Spirit".

In July 2006, it was announced that Warner Bros. Animation and DC Comics would release a series of direct-to-DVD animated movies based on important DC com